Hello, good afternoon, good luck, good riddance!

Perhaps you thought we had died – but no, just dieted, though I can understand why you might have been mistaken. It’s been altogether too long since we last updated, and for that, our profuse apologies. But life found a way, and we forgot, and then it felt that we had been away too long.

So just some very quick news and updates, and then an important message / warning to share.

Firstly, our fourth book is out! And the reviews have been utterly incredible – over 1,150 5* reviews in a month, and that is beyond glorious to see. The book is focused on the one thing we’re known for: delicious meals! It’s called Full On Flavour because that’s what the recipes are: bursting with flavour, with no rubbish ingredients or diet swaps. All under 500 calories, including all the puddings and breakfasts. Plus, some lovely photos of Paul and I to put you off your dinner. What more could you want? And for today only (Sunday 4 February) it’s only 99p on Kindle – you don’t need a Kindle, just download the app. If you prefer the hard copy, that’s only £10.50 on Amazon. Either way, you can get both offers by clicking on the book below!

Next, you can find us on our usual social media channels:

• on our Instagram channel, where we are posting regular recipe videos and food pictures;
• on our Facebook page, where those same recipe videos are posted, plus lots of little extras
• via our Facebook group, which has become a brilliant little group of people posting their food pictures and helping each other out – it’s really quite brilliant

We used to update Twitter but I’d sooner staple my tongue to a moving train than give that human laxative any traffic.

Then, our final bit of news – we’re going to (after ten years!) give twochubbycubs a makeover to make our recipes searchable and more user-friendly. Once that is done, we’ll be updating on the regular (I know, I know, but updating the site in its current form is a ballache beyond compare, so we need to make it easier!) – this will involve taking the site offline for a bit. Not entirely sure when, and we will give a heads-up before it happens, but a plea: if there’s a regular recipe you use from here, take a copy of it – all the recipes will return, but we don’t want you missing out!

And that’s all I have to say on the matter. Hope everyone is keeping well 🙂

J

Look, I know we said we wouldn’t contact each other. We realised that things hadn’t been the same since the accident and that indeed, the loss of your thumb was an unfortunate one. That holiday idea of yours where you hitchhiked around Europe? Completely ruined. My fault, I know, but I told you to exercise caution with the turkey trimmer. We can’t turn the clock back.

However, it’s Christmas, and if Love Actually taught me anything other than the fact you call tell the US President to fuck off and there’ll be no major consequences other than Tiffany from Eastenders giving you chocolate biscuits and come-to-bed eyes, it’s that Christmas is a time for reconnecting. It’s a time for giving, which is exactly why I’ll be giving Paul all the space he needs in the kitchen to make me a delicious dinner whilst I sit feeding the dog illicit Lidl crisps. I’m buoyed up with the bravado afforded by three large bottles of Hoegaarden (other beers are available, but this reminds me of when I was 20 and in a sparkling four-way love-square) and so, this is me saying: hello! I hope you’re keeping well.

Now I shan’t keep you, because there’s gooses to pluck and Celebration Bounties to be rightfully ignored. But see we have something to give away: a short recipe booklet of eight recipes taken straight from our books – including two from our newest wonder, Full On Flavour, which comes out on December 28th. We’ve included a lovely long blog post with it too, so you’ve got something to read whilst you get rid of your Christmas Yule log. It’s been designed entirely by me so I apologise in advance. But we hope you enjoy it! If not, boo-shucks to you. But whatever you do, enjoy Christmas! We’ll be back (properly) ever so soon! Simply click the below gift box to download your PDF! Until we speak again, then…

You know how Cindy Beale just returned from the dead in Eastenders with a new name and a brassy attitude? Well, we’ve Rose from the grave too and whilst we haven’t clobbered anyone with a music box or shagged the landlord of the Queen Vic, we HAVE been busy. With this: our NEWEST cookbook. No gimmicks, no silly ideas – just what we’ve become known for. Excellent recipes, using fresh, simple ingredients, which takes very little effort to put together…and all sprinkled with our usual sassiness. It’s the most colourful, brightest book we’ve ever done and we hope you love it. You can pre-order it by clicking on the picture below! As for the blog, we’re coming back. Soon!

I was desperately trying to think of a pun involving either my eye or my health anxiety but couldn’t think of a good one, although worried sick is a banger if I ever choose to do a mini book on all of this crap. I’m a writer, ladies and gentlemen.

Just a quick post to update on my fizzy brain and how things are in terms of my bout of health anxiety and how I am getting through. I’m going to keep it fairly short because I’ve made a point of not indulging my anxieties for as far as I can, and writing about it can tip into that indulgence. You know the thing where someone tells you not to think of a pink elephant and all you can think of is a pink elephant – well imagine one wearing a t-shirt perhaps one size too small and pawing at his eye and you’ve got me.

But that’s doing my recovery a disservice, because, touch wood, my eye is getting better. That’s right: after weeks of telling myself that this was the end (and, if I’m honest, reassuring myself that it actually wasn’t) whatever the fuck was wrong with my eye has calmed down. Still twinges quite a lot but if that doesn’t underscore what I’ve been saying about if I just accept it’s nothing, I’ll relax, and in turn it’ll go away, what does? I’m almost convinced it was what I said it was: a pulled muscle that took forever to heal because I spent three months frowning like a chimpanzee doing a jigsaw. That and I remembered to put my glasses on of a morning instead of treating them as a fashion accessory and somewhere to rest my eyebrows.

So progress is always good news and it shows you that even with health anxiety, once you choose to accept that the sky isn’t about to fall in, things can and will get better.

But it does lead me to mentioning something else which is a total knacker with health anxiety – transference. That is, the removal of one worry and the replacement of it with another. For me, I’ve gone from fixating on the eye pain onto worrying about the fact I’m twitching and (LOL) jerking all over the place. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. I feel a bit like Tweek from South Park, massively over-stimulated and very bouncy, but that’s an easy enough one to deal with because frankly, who fidgets themselves to death? And it’s a funny one because I’m not sure I’m fidgeting anymore than normal, but rather just being very aware of it. Paul is forever telling me to stop bouncing my legs or clacking my fingers or breathing unnecessarily and I often find myself tensing my hands or feet or whatever and I’ve never really given it thought, but of course now it’s all I can notice. I went through a phase a few years ago where I was convinced that the muscles in my leg twitching away were a precursor to MS, and what is this if not an extension of that? Only I’m not so arsed this time around. But I can live with some fidgeting, if anything, think of the extra calories burned. Indeed, the only way to get over transference of symptoms is to treat it as just another thing to rationalise and get on with – and that’s what I’m doing.

So all in all, progress, and good progress at that, and if you’re reading and going through a bad spell of anxiety yourself, hopefully you can take some comfort in how quickly things can turn around.

I will say one other thing, because well I’m a writer see and I want to hit my word count. This has, in all honesty, been the worst period of health anxiety I’ve gone through in probably a decade. And not just health anxiety, but the resulting general anxiety and feeling down. It happened fast and it happened hard and for quite a bit of it, I couldn’t see a way out of it. I still feel a very long way from myself – but I’m getting better. And in a perverse way it’s provided me with a kick up the arse to realise this is something I’ll always have and that I can’t be complacent about it – it can and will bite me if I don’t pay attention to how I’m feeling at the time.

But you know what really made a difference? Being open and honest about it all. Writing everything down, whether unpublished or otherwise, and talking about it with family and friends and folks online. There’s always the worry of feeling like a burden and for all that I have plastered all manner of detail about our lives on here, I’m actually a very private person when it comes to discussing how I’m feeling, so it was a hard habit to break. I tried a different tack this time around and spoke openly (when asked) and it absolutely helps – I mean, I still feel like a loon when I’m rattling off my symptoms, but it’s good to talk. Remember that, whether you’re the one struggling or you know someone who is.

I’m luckier still in one respect: I have Paul, who god love him, has had to deal with all manner of nonsense these last few months. The best one was when I had to wake him at 4am because I was panicking that I’m having auditory hallucinations through lack of sleep. Nope he explained, that’s just the gas meter door creaking outside, and cuddled me back off to sleep. He’ll also cheerfully explain why I haven’t got disease X or illness Y or Jay-Z. Everyone needs a Paul, but you can’t have mine. Seat’s taken.

Keep going!

Jx

So ahead of getting started with twochubbycubs stuff, and partly because I want an excuse to write, I thought I’d update on last week’s post because I received so many lovely comments and questions from people about it. I can’t decide if it comes across as too naval-gazing or self-indulgent to temporarily use a food blog to discuss mental health issues, but fuck it, let’s roll the dice. I can always stick a scrambled eggs recipe on next week to take the edge off things. Social media, blogs, reels, updates – they all present these perfect little glimpses into us living our best lives. Nobody ever writes a blog post about a time they want to forget, after all. Such curated happiness is all well and good, but if you’re suffering with your mental health it can seem a bit like you’re the only one out there who can’t quite get their ducks in a row. Whilst I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert on the matter, and lord knows we don’t currently need yet more armchair-experts online, I hope that by writing about the bad times and how I’m getting through, it can hold a mirror up. It also helps me on a personal note, because having a catalogue of my thoughts that I can refer back to at a later point when things have settled down and I’m not totally doolally is a comfort. Of course, I could do that privately (and I do – there’s as much blog unpublished than there is published), but well, got to keep the wheel spinning.

So yep, please do forgive the (hopefully temporary) change of pace here.

In truth, I’m actually feeling a bit better. To recap: started having eye-pain back in December (and yes, I’ve been to the opticians twice over now – was a bit remiss of me to miss that key part out in my last post) and since then, have been in a cycle of expecting it to go away, being disappointed it hasn’t, worrying about it, trying to stop that worry swelling up and triggering my health anxiety and now full-blown anxiety about the fact it is clearly a brain tumour. Or MS. Or Parkinsons. Or CJD. Or a brain bleed because I saw that on a reddit post. Or any number of exciting and terrifying cancers.

When I’m feeling rational, this is what I think it is: I strained my eye muscles watching TV whilst lying down, and rather like when you sprain your ankle, it took a while to heal. Because it wasn’t immediate, my brain took issue with the fact that it hadn’t disappeared and started fretting. When you’re anxious, you tense up, and that means more strain on the muscle – and that makes it worse. Plus, I’m hyper-aware of my body at the moment, so every little pain or twinge that I’d normally dismiss is a CLEAR SIGN OF THINGS GETTING WORSE.

But because I’m anxious, I’m over-analysing everything, and this constant state of feeling anxious and worried is keeping me in this little vicious cycle. When you are anxious, your body is in a heightened state of alertness and adrenaline is pumping all over the place – it’s why the heart races, it’s what a panic attack is: a fear response. Because I’ve had two months of living like this, my body is worn out. My newest symptom is jerky legs and arms which has been fun, but totally normal when you think of what’s going on in my body. My body is like a spring that someone has been tightening ever so slowly for the last few weeks, and all that built up energy needs to come out. Essentially, I need to relax, and take a few weeks to calm the body back down. Which sounds incredible when you think I’ve just been away for five weeks, I know, but it was still always at the back of my mind.

But I said I was feeling better, and I am. Remember I said I was going for a CT scan? The lovely folks at my local hospital moved my appointment forward from late March to this morning – brilliant. I should say they didn’t ring me up with a grave voice advising me to come in as soon as possible – the CT scan remains ‘routine’ not ‘fuck me, don’t make any weekend plans’, I had called up on the off-chance of a cancellation and the sun of good luck shone on me. Naturally being me I turned up an entire hour early which gave me an opportunity to fret about things before going in. I was distracted by a cleaner who seemed in remarkably good cheer considering it was 7.40am and I had (accidentally) kicked her cleaning bucket and then sat in the chair she was trying to clean. I did apologise profusely and offer to help but she was having none of it, possibly guessing how distracted I was and fearful I’d start a fire with her bottle of Flash or knock a wall down in my haste to assist. You know though, I’ve poured countless words into this blog over the years about how amazing the NHS is, but today was another good example: from the receptionist who pointed out I was in the wrong department, to the cleaner who was whistling and cheerful at such an early hour, to the kind nurse who answered my questions about the scan with patience and good humour and who didn’t laugh when I stopped being brave and shut my eyes during the scan – we’re still on a perfect hot streak with wonderfully kind and patient NHS staff. You’ll miss it when it’s gone, I promise, and for the love of God think about that next year when it comes to putting an X in a box.

But the scan itself was nothing – lie on a table, try not to move. I’ve had a number of MRIs over the years (surprise!) and this was nothing compared to those. If anything, I missed the chance to try and doze whilst the world’s worst techno played. I did have a little seatbelt put over my skull to keep my head still, something which didn’t pass without snark from my mate who enquired whether they needed to get one of those bright orange extenders like they do on aeroplanes for those of us carrying significant extra baggage. Luckily I’m used to being restrained and told to keep still – indeed, it made a change not to have a pair of boots perched on my back during.

I’m now facing seven to ten days before someone takes a look at the results and lets my doctor know. Whilst I am fully expecting this week to be a rough one – for all the time I spend telling myself it’ll be nothing, another scan I’ve had done which shows I’m alright really, I spend an equal time trying to block out the ‘what if it is this’ and ‘what if they find that’. I’ll be fine – as I said, feeling better – but it’s still exhausting. Weirdly, if they do find something – chances vanishingly small, remember – I’ll cope. I didn’t think I would, but the same chap who made the seatbelt gag also pointed out that when I’ve previously had a genuine medical issue, I’ve been remarkably stoic about it and got through it with minimal fuss. Well no, lots of fuss, but not as much as you’d expect from someone with a brain capable of turning an ingrown toe into advanced sepsis or diagnosing himself with weeks to live when his hayfever was bad. I cope so much better with absolute than abstraction: that’s why health anxiety is such a fucking knobhead. If someone tells me my ear will fall off tomorrow, I can plan and deal with it accordingly, but if I read somewhere there’s a chance my ear could fall off, I’ll spend weeks worrying about it until I kick myself mentally up the arse and get on with things.

So that’s where I am right now. I am hopeful that the scan will come back with nothing to report and once that happens, I can work on calming my anxiety back down. As that happens, the adrenaline and stress rolling around in my body will abate and the symptoms will ease off. That means I won’t have so many ‘triggers’ and I can begin the climb back to feeling normal. I’m going to try and keep busy this week and keep my fingers crossed (that’ll be my stenosing tenosynovitis getting worse) that the report comes back as soon as possible, though. I want to get started, whatever that means.

Before I go, a final thought. I’ve touched on it a few times as the reason I’m writing these blogs, but it bears repeating: it really does help to talk to people about this. I’ve made the mistake way back when of keeping this bottled up, and trust me, it’s the worst thing you can do. It’s like getting a bottle of fizzy pop and shaking it up – at some point that lid is coming off and it’s going to be messy. I’ve made a point this time of letting people know what I am going through. When people ask how I am, I’m not replying on autopilot and pretending everything is fine, because lord knows it isn’t. And it helps so damn much. Sometimes you need to just pour your thoughts out and have someone listen. If you’re on the other side – if you have someone confiding in you – listen. You don’t need to provide answers and solutions, just an ear. I’m lucky to have a pretty damn good circle of people I can trust and talk to, and doubly so for having this space to get it all down, and if you’re in the same boat I encourage you to try and find the same.

That’s enough from me, anyway. Thanks for reading!

Jx

I feel we are long overdue an update, aren’t we?

Firstly, we’re both fine, thank you so much for asking. You didn’t ask? I see.

We actually managed to sneak away on holiday in January – returning (finally) to Florida for a few weeks of rollercoasters, waterslides and as much culture as one might find on a bleached petri dish. Listen, nobody goes to Disney to stroke their chins and exclaim ‘but what can one feel from such a representation’* or other such bollocks. You go to make sure your vestibular system knows who’s really in charge and to spend money so fast you get scorch marks on the tips of your fingers.

* I mention this because we did actually meet someone like this in the queue for Tower of Terror – a walking haircut who held up the queue to inform everyone around her, very loudly, of how wrong the ‘period’ theming of the hotel was. Ma’am, you’re in a theme park, no-one is impressed. Save it for Twitter. To add insult to injury, she stepped on Paul’s foot and blankly refused to apologise – luckily she was wearing some god-awful shoes knitted from llama-hair or suchlike, so it barely registered.

I’ll say only this, with an eye to some future blog posts that’ll cover it in more detail: we had the most amazing, incredible time. I’d go so far to say it was the best holiday we’ve ever had and listen, if that doesn’t impress you, know that we once did a three day coach holiday to Birmingham.

Urgh, get a room, right.

Because of this, the holiday blues that I usually feel after some time away were absolutely off-the-charts. Now I know there’s nothing more self-indulgent than feeling sorry for yourself when you’ve been lucky enough to get away from the relentless misery that is the UK, and for that I apologise only a shade. You must realise that I am an emotional being at the best of times, I just hide it behind a well-groomed façade of indifference. As a result, the last couple of weeks have been emotionally hard-going.

This has been compounded yet further by my own health anxiety conspiring against me in its most vicious form. In my last entry on here I wrote of some ongoing eye pain (like someone pressing a thumb in the back of my left eye) and how I was being stoic and using all my previous coping mechanisms to get through it. I felt as though I was doing well. But see, that was back in December and I was banking on the eye nonsense sorting itself out and buggering off by now. Alas, no. So although the last few weeks have been tremendous, they’ve been tempered with the utter exhaustion of having to manage my own health anxiety and what feels like an almost permanent headache. On holiday you can distract yourself with amazing things, but this isn’t the same at home, and as a result I’ve been pondering more than I should.

Without doubt, this has been the hardest period of prolonged mental health difficulties I have faced in many years and whilst I know it will clear, I am really bloody tired of it. I only write this now because I have been very frank about my anxiety through the nine years of this blog and have written at length about how I successfully manage my anxiety – it is important then to show the other side of the coin and write about the bad times too. I’ll be fine, though.

The inevitable result of this ongoing malaise is my demotivation to do all the usual things with twochubbycubs. A good example: would you want to sit in front of a computer typing out a blog post or editing videos if the screen made your eyes hurt? Of course not. But I love doing this, and so when I find myself wanting to write but unable to motivate myself to do so, it magnifies the shitty feelings still further. The less I do, the more I miss.

This leaks out still further into other aspects of my life: I feel disinclined to do other things – gym, running, going out, cooking, eating healthily, making an effort because I am tired and stressed as a result of the eye issue and the subsequent health anxiety tussle. But those things are what bring comfort and happiness and without them, the vicious circle continues and grows. I think of my health anxiety like putting a glass of diesel into a petrol car – I’m still going to motor along, but it’s going to be strained and the journey bumpier as a result. Listen, I don’t know if that analogy quite works because my mechanical knowledge extends only to what colour boxers our local Kwik Fit bloke wears, but you get the drift.

But: enough is enough. As cathartic as typing all of the above was, I’m painfully aware of how self-pitying it comes across. This blog entry is more me trying to put a full stop on the last few weeks of moping and listening to my theatrical and dramatic brain and instead, choosing to be more proactive about fixing the various things I’ve let slide.

So. I’ve been back to the doctors (for only the second time since all of this kicked off, a vast improvement on previous episodes where I saw the doctor so often his wife grew jealous) and explained the eye-pain was still there. He asked that I stop masturbating – not because it was affecting my vision, he just couldn’t get the blood pressure cuff on my jostling arm. Ayoo. I spoke very honestly about how I am sure it is nothing but how the ongoing pain was causing me more mental distress than anything else, and he was ever so lovely.

That’s a point worth mentioning, especially to those who suffer with health anxiety. Mention it to your doctor when you see them: don’t go in demanding every test you can think of, but do explain that you’re prone to catastrophising and ask the questions that are bothering you. For example, my main worry about all of this is that I have some dark tumour billowing in my brain that may reach a critical mass at any point and remove my inability to sing along to any Pet Shop Boys song. He took the time to explain why it is very, very unlikely to be anything of that nature – I’d have more symptoms, they’d be far more permanent, I’ve got a head so big he’s surprised the USA haven’t shot it down and so I could comfortably grow a tumour in there with room to spare, that sort of thing. He was – always is – very patient and kind, and I imagine most doctors will be the same if you have concerns.

With my worries somewhat abated, we agreed that I would go for a CT scan (purely precautionary) next month to have a look in my head. It’ll be like the space-docking scene in Interstellar but with a fraction more Geordie. They’re also taking bloods to make sure I’m still o-HAAAAY positive. So we shall see where that goes. I am hopeful that they’ll find nothing more than stalactites and snot up in there, and I can stop worrying, and in turn, my health anxiety will fuck off. It’s certainly how I managed to beat all my other previous life-ending conditions that I diagnosed myself with.

On a more personal note, I’ve created a little bucket list of self-improvement, and I’ll be working towards that over the year. It’s like I’m revising for my GCSEs, only I’m not sacking it off to play Max Payne instead. This bucket list isn’t because I think I’m dying, I should say, but rather I work so much better when I have things to aim for than I do when I allow myself to procrastinate. Again, we’ll see how that pans out.

Which brings me neatly to you lot and twochubbycubs. I know I’m a terror for false promises about content, but I am going to make a concerted effort from March 1 to update more often, create new recipes and write more. I bloody love writing and you best believe that five weeks in Florida has provided me with stories and views I want to share. There’s also the small matter of refreshing the older recipes. Hell, I might even get around to adding a functioning search button and a website refresh, but let us not get giddy. I do promise to try harder, though.

Finally then – a thank you. This may sound a little over-the-top but when my mood is low, seeing people cooking our recipes or reading the reviews for our books or just being decent in our facebook group is a genuine tonic. As are the Instagram messages from folks saying they’re cooking for the first time or a blog post has made them laugh or they’ve seen us in ASDA or just wanting a chat. We’re terrible at replying because we get so many, but we do read them and enjoy them. Keep doing that, please. For those that have subscribed to the blog, thank you, you’re why I keep writing these.

Onwards, then.

Jx

Hello there: I’d apologise for the next few paragraphs, but you know what you’re getting with us by now.

I write this entry not by way of update, but by means of a goodbye. See, I have been poorly for three whole days now and events are now hastening me to the end. As someone who enjoys the giddy thrills of health anxiety, and an occasional dabbler in Eastenders spoilers, I have diagnosed myself with a brain tumour. Plus, for good measure: bum cancer, gastroenteritis, pneumonia (double pneumonia mind you, it is Christmas after all), encephalitis, fuch eye disease (genuine thing, and don’t google it) (you googled it, and see it wasn’t actually so bad) (but do what you’re told), parentheses-overuse strain and, for a brief yet terrifying moment, the worry that I’d been forgetting to take my contact lenses out of an evening and had built up an entirely functional second eye facing into my mind. Imagine being able to see inside myself: I’m 97% cherry cola Elf Bar and the rest piss and vinegar, no-one needs that.

Of course the reality of my situation is that I have the sickness and Does It Always Run Really Horribly Over Each Ankle (you’re welcome) bug that everyone else has both had and seemingly taken the time to make sure they wipe their shitty fingers on every conceivable surface I would later go on on touch. I wouldn’t mind so much – I love a good sit down at the best of times – but it’s become a source of mystery to me exactly where all of this effluence coming from. Simple maths would suggest that if there’s only a plain sandwich and a cup of tea going in then a similar volume should come back out, but goodness no – going to the toilet at the moment is like playing the world’s worst slot machine. Sometimes you get three bells and a few dinky coins drop out and you feel grateful for a good time, sometimes the sevens roll in and it’s like someone crashed a plane into Scrooge McDuck’s Money Bin.

The constant use of the bathroom means we are saving money though: the heat produced from the simultaneous whirring of both the electricity and water meter wheels mean we’re officially off-grid. I’ve oft-mocked Paul on this very blog for his urgent need to defecate the second he steps off a plane, enters a new hotel room, clears his throat or blinks, and now here I am hurtling out of the room at any given moment shrieking as though the chair I was sitting on had suddenly electrified. Worse, I return from the bathroom looking like Matt Smith when they put the old-man make-up on him in The Time Of The Doctor. It’s no life, but Paul does have the good grace (and inherent sensibility) not to look smug, I’ll give him that.

On top of my arsehole looking like the map from the Bonanza opening credits (one for the oldies there), I’ve also had a terrible headache behind my left eye for the last few weeks. I say terrible because it’s me and I can’t go a single moment without hyperbole otherwise I’ll die, and naturally that ‘constant’ headache has actually been intermittent and only mildly painful, but even so – I’ve been mentally preparing my funeral wishes. In the spirit of over-sharing and just in case for the first time in my life I’ve actually managed to correctly pre-empt my own quietus, my wishes are simple:

• please burn rather than bury me: yes, it’ll be like when they burned all the cows during the foot and mouth crisis, but I eat well and the smell will be delicious – plus it’ll be good to choke someone on my smoke one last time
• I’d like Abide with Me played at the funeral, and not just because Eastenders did it (beautifully) when Dot died, but because it’s the best hymn in the world
  • well, after ‘Were You There’, that is, but if we had that at my funeral, half of the North East’s plumbers, tradesmen and passing lorry drivers would have to pause, dab their eyes and nod solemnly when the line ‘I was cold, I was naked, were you there, were you there?‘ came about)
  • that said, circling back to Eastenders, if you wanted to play the duff-duff when the curtain fell across my coffin, I’d be absolutely game, doubly so if you could finagle Sonia into doing it on the trumpet
• be sure there’s the most terrific buffet you’ve ever seen put on at the wake – and double whatever the amount you were planning on putting on because it’s rare I associate with anyone whose belt doesn’t come from the back of the rack;
• scatter my ashes somewhere wonderful and plant a tree somewhere I’d love, though I imagine you’ll have a fight on your hands getting Moto to agree to the planting of a sapling in the gents at any services along the A1

Either way, it’ll be fun. Just be sure to look after Paul: he needs three square meals and eighteen opportunities to tell people he’s lost weight a day otherwise he gets fussy.

The eye thing isn’t really anything to be concerned about: a few weeks ago Paul was away for a couple of days and I spent 24 hours watching 24, with the remaining six hours staring at my phone and doing indiscreet things to myself, resulting in eye strain and wrists that sound like corn popping in a microwave. In a way, it is fuch-eye disease, but not in the way google suggests. As I’m forever wearing my glasses for a moment and setting them aside for an exciting treasure hunt four days later, the eye strain is taking a while to wear off, and as I am focused (well, barely) on it, I’m exacerbating the situation, and it’s all very tiresome. I have had an optician look deep into my eyes and reassure me via the faint whiff of their breakfast breath that everything is fine, so mustn’t worry. Plus I used my own health anxiety against myself and examined my own medical notes from 2017, which revealed the exact same issue and a similar timescale of recovery. I knew having my medical notes printed and bound over sixteen luxurious editions would pay for itself in the long run.

Oh! Those notes did spit out something curious though: in 2018, there’s a note in there for ‘removal of a foreign body’ at my doctor’s surgery. I can say now with absolute sincerity that I have zero idea what this refers to, and nothing either side of this mysterious entry sheds any light. It’s not even as though I can ask for elaboration – the doctor has long since gone – but that is going to itch away at me for the next few weeks until I shoot upright in bed with my epiphany. Will keep you posted.

Anyway, I mention all of the above as a somewhat jokey goodbye, but of course it isn’t goodbye (just yet). But this will be the final post of 2022, and I thought it would be good to finish it the way we started it – 1200 words about nonsense and no food recipe. But 2023 will bring change and good things four all, I promise. The gentlest reminder that our cookbooks make wonderful Christmas presents and it isn’t too late to get them ordered for those you are stuck for. They’re on Amazon and bookshops but I won’t sully this by spamming you with links.

Assuming Paul and I don’t shit our arses off, we’ll see you in 2023, and until then, have the most amazing Christmas, lord knows you’ve earned it.

James x

PS: Christmas Goomba says hi.